Does a burned CD-R really sound "better" than its original CD?

No.

That's exactly the question you should have asked those audiophiles who claimed such thing.

By the way, which site was it?

Balderdash as stated.

What I can tell you that is true is that if you have a somewhat scratched up CD that doesn't play well on your CD player, there is a fair chance that ripping it and burning a copy will give you something that will play well on the same CD player.

First off, jitter is the audiophile boogeyman of recent times. It seems like every audiophile worries about having jitter in his system. Some think they can even hear jitter go "Boomp!" in the night. ;-)

One of the major purposes of a CD player is to remove jitter from the playback of the CD.

Because of the microscopic but still significant off-centeredness and minor warps in a CD, the signal that comes off of the laser pickup looks like #&!! and is guaranteed to be full of jtter. This is fed into a small (by modern standards) buffer and clocked out by a local stable clock that sets the pace for the whole operation. Poof! negligable jitter and no audible jitter at all.

So, how can ripping a damaged CD and reburning it make it work better? One of the big differences between playing a CD on a CD player and ripping it is that CD players don't retry reading damaged tracks, but a good burning program does. Many burning programs intercept an internal signal in the CD ROM that says that the track had nonrecoverable errors. They then retry reading the track looking for consistent results. The nature of damaged tracks is that at least occasionally they will be read right. When they are read wrong there are nearly an infinite number of possible errors, but then they are by chance read right, there is consistency. Therefore it is a good guess that any consistent results are also correct.

Actually, there was no need to even ask. Any URL with the phrase "Geoffkait" in it is presumptively fiction.

Then you shouldn't waste your time on forums like that.

I don't know whether to laugh or cry after reading that thread. What a train wreck.

I attempted to read it after your review, but admittedly, could not stand it for very long. Seriously? I have a photocopy of J Lo's bumm, but no amount of recopying can make it look any better! Perhaps if just had better jitter correction.....

It only makes a noticalble difference when a green marker is used in conjunction with the CD-R disk.

A "Black" CD-R disck

The only way i can think of that a burned CD-R can sound 'better' (or more commonly different to some ears), might be due to any volume leveling or dynamic range changes that the particular burning program might be set to apply...........

It is highly unlikely that a commercial CD has audible jitter - the gear used to make them is generally free of audible jitter.

It is possible that a CD will become physically damaged, and that ripping it and burning a new copy will correct the damage. I've done with with some of my kid's CDs. This can happen because some ripping software will use additional retries to finally obtain correct data.

You guys just can't hear the jitter because your systems aren't resolving enough, duh.

Easy enough to say, particularly since you can provide all of our equipment lists.

Reality is that audible jitter in good digital equipment is usually an audiophile myth boogey man. Just for grins, what does jitter actually sound like?

^^^ Good question. I'd be more inclined to believe that brains haven't resolved enough to realize it isn't an issue. Outside of those who simply must spend money chasing ghosts, of course.

But to those that have been brainwashed by salesman (like the one who posts a lot on this forum), it's the systems that aren't resolving enough.

lol srsly? Smack whoever told you that, maybe a "warm" amp or "warm" headphones will change the sound but copying something over is only guranteed to make things slightly worse, too minimal to notice but still worse.

Be careful on that site, people dress up pet rocks and sell them for $200 to "balance your chi" for "better listening"

^^^^ I'd guess that guy is joking

^Yup, pretty sure he was joking

You'll need to copy the disc to a black CD-R with green-pen surrounding it and don't forget to freeze the disc and demagnetize it before each playback.

Maybe you can read some technical materials published by Phillips, Sony, Analog Devices, Burr Brown and found out for once.
Or here: http://www.jitter.de/english/soundfr.html
You keep saying that everything 'sounds the same'... maybe it's time for you to really listen carefully. Or, if your hearing is damaged, stop assuming that everyone else has the same problems.
Edited by SoNic67 - 6/10/13 at 6:06pm

The only way it can sound better (or worse in most cases) is to tweak the tracks with 3rd party editing software like soundforge. Other than than, the bits of information you rip from a cd are the same exact bits being burned back to another cd. So it is a literal impossibility for it to sound any different, and furthermore, its also impossible for a cd of any music genre to sound 'warm'.

Been there done that, sometimes dozen of times, sometimes going back decades.

If you think that it supports the idea that there are wdespread auudible differences amoung good digital audio gear, it would be you who needs to read up and understand things better.

I see no evidence of any proper listening tests. The evaluations appear to be sighted, non-time synched, non level matched, etc.

Furthermore, the article does not seem to make a clear statement about what jitter sounds like - it just quotes some poetry.

Not really. I say that good digital audio gear strongly tends to sound the same. That's based on just a tad less than 30 years of experience, including numerous carefully done listening tests.

Doctor, cure thyself!

In general it is not possible to do a proper listening test of good digital gear that has a positive outcome for audible differences. If you study the technical literature of audio, as opposed to audiophile fluff pieces, you will find that this has been the general outcome for decades.

No way is my hearing as good as it was say a decade ago, but even in that ancient state of the art, the rule was the the jitter in good equipment was not audible to anybody in a well-run listening test.

For example:

http://downloads.bbc.co.uk/rd/pubs/reports/1974-11.pdf

Please note section 6 "Conclusions".

The amounts of jitter found to be audible are huge compared to modern equipment.

I figured that including "duh" in my statement would make the joke pretty obvious seeing as it's a 5 yr old's equivalent of QED. I guess I should be more careful when talking about jitter since the fate of the world is at stake here. Or I could just call someone a poopy-head.